Here it is: a six o'clock call for the last jump, the home run to Hugo, no hurdles but short of a few people who left for other places last night, until next season farewell, and Dylan wakes up as we settle into our spot in winter quarters and says, "This is my favorite lot."
We're home for the rest of the year.

Last show, last pictures, and the usual nostalgia for what's ending.
This was a good season for the Kelly Miller Circus, good weather, so little mud it could hardly be called a mud show, a quiet season, and we missed half of it but the boys are five and six and the circus is all they've known, and if this was our last season as a circus family I don't want to think about it, not now.
Last shows, goodbye and see you next year, I will cherish this circus family forever and ever, like a children's tale.

Last jump, last lot, last town, and the Halloween party.We dressed Dylan and Nicolas as the Vazquez Circus clowns in their Martian act. They won second place. It was a great party, and the costumes were better than ever. The Loyal/Fusco tribe outdid themselves again, as the Flintstones family, complete with a Flintstones foam buggy.

In Columbia all day visiting schools and my friend Sally.
I liked the school with the poorest ratings the best, the people there, the feel of it; it added a science and math specialization and a new, gregarious and energetic principal a few years back.
I like that the school is named after an artist, Thomas Hart Benton, a muralist from Missouri who belonged to the Regionalist movement.

My bad knee forces me to slow down, to walk slowly, and so the proverbial silver lining: I walk mindfully, carefully minding each of my steps, slowly, each step fully lived, like a Buddhist walking meditation, and I stop to think about that, and enjoy it.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

We got a little lost on the jump this morning. I figure we added about ten miles to the distance, but then again we got to see the rest of the construction around the St Louis freeways, which, like the ones in the Rio Grande valley, seem to be in a state of perpetual reconstruction.We went to the St Louis City Museum last night with John Moss' family, and met Rebecca's family and Tavana's family there. No need to say the kids just adored it (but maybe not as much as we did.)

Friday, October 12, 2012

Rehearsals for next year's production have been going on all week, and Fridman's new act is coming together nicely, hours of daily practice paying off. The kids are still practicing too, and Nicolas is an inch away from doing the split.

So I have osteochondritis dissecans.
It's latin for "Sorry but your bones are dying off."
Or, my left knee started hurting badly last night and today I can't walk without limping.
It feels just like ten years ago, when my other knee was diagnosed with a rare disease that involves a list of scary phenomenons like reduced blood flow to the knee bone and detached cartilage and bone fragments. I had surgery and it didn't work. My right knee has been bothering me on and off all this time, and now it's the left, too.
Mulling this tonight as I try not to panic, and if I'm right in my self-diagnosis, it occurs to me that the first outburst of the disease happened as I was getting ready to move to California from Jacksonville and start a new job at a newspaper there, and that now is exactly one of these times again, a time of change and stress and its cohort of personal upheaval and emotional roller-coaster. If I am right and this is a recurrence of the disease then all my plans once again are up in the air, as I'll need surgery right away if I am not to walk through life not only being in excruciating pain at every step, but also not being able to work or care for the kids by myself.

Annual visit to my former home town and "where Fridman and I met" town of Jacksonville, and a pumpkin and garden fresh tomatoes-filled day with our friends Steve and Tiffany. We stopped at Liliana's house and I almost gave her a heart attack; I thought she knew we were in town and it turned out she didn't: her face when she opened her front door.Dear friends, dear memories.